San Bernardino County water officials plan to double stormwater capture in midst of dry winter

Water agencies in the San Bernardino and Pomona valleys are beefing up efforts to capture as much stormwater runoff as they can this winter, officials said.

Water-containment structures below Seven Oaks Dam northeast of Redlands in the San Bernardino Mountains are bone dry, but the San Bernardino Valley Municipal Water District is planning to more than double the size of the capture basin over the next four years.

The reason?

Rainwater is free, it’s very clean, and it can be stored underground — also free — until needed.

And because it’s coming from higher altitude and moving toward the ocean, gravity manages the transportation — no expensive pumping is necessary.

“We’d like to be able to divert 500 cubic feet of water per second, which is more than double the current capability of 200 cubic feet per second,” said Bob Tincher, the district’s manager of engineering and planning.

The agency, based in San Bernardino, plans to accept bids early next year for the project, which includes an initial pipe and channel diversion construction phase followed by the construction of a number of water-containment areas that allow rainwater to percolate into the underground water supply. There, the water will migrate toward wells placed by a variety of water utility companies.

The district, which covers about 353 square miles and has a population of about 660,000, serves San Bernardino, Colton, Loma Linda, Redlands, Rialto, Bloomington, Highland, East Highland, Mentone, Grand Terrace and Yucaipa, according to its website.

A similar effort to save rainwater was launched about a decade ago over the vast Chino Basin, said Chris Berch, manager of planning and environmental compliance for the Chino-based Inland Empire Utilities Agency.

The West End agency covers 242 square miles, distributes imported water, provides industrial/municipal wastewater collection and treatment services, and other related utility services to more than 850,000 people.

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The agency’s service area includes Chino, Chino Hills, Fontana, Montclair, Ontario and Upland, as well as the Rancho Cucamonga-based Cucamonga Valley Water District, the Montclair-based Monte Vista Water District, and the Fontana Water Co. The IEUA coordinated the rainwater capture plans for the Chino Basin.

The aggressive rainwater recapture effort for the East Valley was made possible by the construction of the Seven Oaks Dam, which allows control of the flow of runoff from snow and rain into the Santa Ana River and out to the Pacific Ocean, Tincher said Friday.

Since 1990, about 2 million acre-feet of water have escaped the region and flowed into the ocean, Tincher said.

One acre-foot of water can provide for the water needs of two households for a year, he said.

Technically, California is in the middle of its “rainy season,” which lasts until March, but AccuWeather says 2013 is shaping up to be the driest year on record for many places.

Very little — if any rain — is expected to fall in California into 2014, AccuWeather said in a statement Friday.

Almost all of the Golden State is under either a severe or extreme drought with no end in sight heading into the new year.

“With the huge agricultural community already burdened by high prices of water and big restrictions on the amount of water allocated, this bleak outlook could be quite significant,” said Ken Clark, Western U.S. expert for AccuWeather.com.

High groundwater levels were problematic in the San Bernardino area in the 1980s and early 90s, but the problem was brought under control by higher pumping demands as population increased and by coordinated management of groundwater basins.

“We need to be able to use the groundwater basins to store as much water as possible. But we also need to do it without causing water to flood basements, as it did in some parts of San Bernardino in the 1980s,” Tincher said.

San Bernardino Valley Municipal Water District is one of the agencies in the Basin Technical Advisory Committee, or BTAC, a collaborative group that includes representatives from 13 water agencies and other stakeholders serving a 300-square-mile area that stretches from Riverside, Colton, and Rialto east to Yucaipa.